Butte Historical Society Newsletter

Winter, 1998

 

Genealogical Workshop Planned

A three session genealogical workshop will begin on Saturday, January 24, 1998, at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. The first session will deal with getting started and organizing your work. Presenters will be Helen Brown, Ellen Cram, Pat Kane, Successive sessions will take place on February 21 and March 28, 1998. February presenters will be Eleanor Herndon, Doris Beckman, Dorothy Duddy_, and Steve Dennehy. Topics will include researching DAR, LDS, and military records, and tracing Cornish, English, and immigrant ancestors. In March, John Astle will talk on writing family histories, and Sue Huntington, Creative Memories consultant, will give a presentation on preserving your family treasures.

The workshop is sponsored by the Friends of the Archives, the DAR, and the Butte Historical Society. Sessions will last from 9:00 am. to 3:30 p.m. Workshop fees are $20 per session or $50 for all three. Fees will go toward the preservation of Butte City Directories. Further information can be obtained by calling the Archives: (406) 723-8262 Ext. 306.

Our regular Speakers' Program will resume on February, 19 at the Archives at 7:00p.m. The speaker will be Rob McCarthy, the Butte-Silver Bow County Attorney. His talk will cover early Butte legal cases and personalities. Mr. McCarthy is an avid local historian and is noted for his numerous humorous antidotes. On March 19, the speaker will be Fred Quivik, a longtime member of the society. Although he has lived in Fred, Montana for the past several years the focus of much of his research has been industrial archaeology and Butte mining and smelting history. The topic of his presentation will be Thomas Couch, a prominent pioneer smelterman in Butte,

Ann Cote Smith Essay Contest Announced

Papers for the third annual Ann Cote Smith Essay Contest for local middle school and high school students, are being accepted by the society. The final deadline for submission of 1000-2000 word papers on Butte History is April 3, Bonds and awards will be presented to place winners in the middle school and high school divisions at the Copper King Mansion on May

19. More information may be obtained by calling Jon Thompson 782-7580.

Ray Calkins Memorial Research Fellowship

The Butte Historical Society is pleased to announce the availability of the Ray Calkins Memorial Research Fellowship. It has a $1,500 stipend which is offered biennially for historical research on a subject relative to Butte-Silver Bow history. Research, at least two weeks of which shall be conducted at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, must contribute toward the production of a written publication or a film/video project.

Any independent historian, graduate student, or scholar may apply. Applicants must submit a resume, a three-page proposal including a description of the research project, proposed sources, and a proposed budget for use of the stipend.

Applications must be submitted by May 1, 1998 to the Butte Historical Society, P.O.Box 3913, Butte, MT 59701. The award will be announced on June 1.

The current Calkins' Fellow is John Mihelich, a doctoral candidate at Washington. State University. His dissertation, Life With the Richest Hill Morality, Cultural Idenity, and Self in Butte Montana will be a welcome addition to our knowledge of the community.

On January 29 at 7:00 p.m., the ARS annual business meeting will take place at the Archives. In addition to recapping 3997 and reviewing proposed programs, an election of officers will take place. Current officers are James 0, Harrington, President; James Courtney, Vice President; Kathy Driscoll, Secretary; Patricia Kane, Treasurer, and Ellen Cram, Corresponding Secretary. Executive Board members include the officers plus John Astle, ton Johnson, Bob McCarthy, Cim .Martz, John Thompson, and Dan Peters. Nominations for new officers and Board members may be made to Ellen Cram at (406) 723-8262 Ext. 306 or directly to the Archives prior to the meeting.

During the 1980s, the Society actively published materials. The materials published at that time are still a major source of revenue. However, most who were involved have left the community. At present, it appears that an opportunity has been presented to us to resuming our involvement in publishing materials dealing with Butte history. Due to our lack of experience. we are planning to jointly republish Copper Camp with the Montana Historical Society. To make this a successful venture, the Society is seeking underwriters to help finance the project. Volunteer help is being solicited also.

One of the new committees of the Historical Society is seeking to create a multi-use interpretive center at the Leonard Mine on North Main Street. Although it is 'mostly still in the planning stage, its objectives are most ambitious and will "tell the story of Butte" by a variety of methods that will complement other interpretative centers in the community.

'Cleaning of the engine house and other structures at the site is in progress, and a large collection of mining records has been found, They> have been deposited at the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. Anyone who is interested in assisting' in' the project call 723-5723;

A new committee of the Butte Historical Society has adopted the name the "Distaff Side." It began as a project in Dr. William MacGregor's "Business and professional Writing" class at Montana Tech to preserve the memory of Butte's Mary MacLane, a major feminist and writer at the turn of the 20~ century. A group of students became involved in a project to determine the feasibility of preserving the MacLean house at 419 North Excelsior, acquiring title, and converting it into a museum, A few of the initial group continued their involvement following graduation. Cim Marti should be singled out for her dedication and perseverance in attempting to make the MacLane museum a reality. In addition, Citizens for Preservation and Restoration (CPR) should be commended for their efforts to secure the structure and to prevent further deterioration.

Mary MacLane's Significance

by Cim Martz, Sheily Shafford, and Tracy Holmes

Our research has given us insight about the circumstances that influenced Mary MacLane's personality and the attitude that produced her first novel. Pier writing developed from her feelings about her family life and about Butte.

Mary MacLane was born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1881 to Margaret and James MacLane. She had one sister and two brothers. In 1884 her family moved to Fergus Falls Minnesota. There her father died when Mary was eight years old. In 1892 Mary's mother remarried Henry Kienze, who was the executor of James MacLane's $500,000 estate.

Mary MacLane's family moved to Butte around 1893 and lived on Dakota Street. When Mary was a sophomore in high school, her family moved into the house at 439 North Excelsior. This house was the setting that inspired the book, The Story of Mary MacLane, and where Mary MacLane's writing career began.

Mary's life was negatively influenced by several factors. She was torn from her childhood in besutifiil farm country and exiled to Butte after her father’s death and her mother's remarriage. The impact was a strong one, although not apparent to anyone at that time. This was compounded by Mary's anger at her stepfather who squandered 'her father's fortune' on ill-fated business ventures' and had no friends to send her and her sister' to college. She was very bitter because of this.

At the age of' eighteen Mary started her first novel, The Story of Mary MacLane. She wrote openly about all of her thoughts and feelings--every vanity, weakness, and desire. She wrote of diverse things such as drugs, death, truth, bisexuality, beauty, and the Devil, whom she wished to marry.

As Mary wrote she gazed out of her second floor, bedroom window. Butte was cold and dirty. The skies were dark with smoke from the smelters. The people were from many different nationalities. They retained their individual cultures by containing themselves in well defined ethnic neighborhoods. Many people never learned to speak English. They viewed outsiders with malice and suspicion, Hence, the descriptions of Butte and its people that brought the wrath of the city upon tier.

"And so this is Butte, the promicuous—the Bohemian. And all these things are the Devil's playthings. They amuse him doubtless. Butte is a place of sand and barrenness. The souls of these people are dumb."

The Story of Mary MacLane was published in 1902. It sold almost 100,000 copies in its first month. The success of this novel generated a great deal of money and enabled Mary to leave Butte and travel to Chicago, and later to New York City, where she wrote for the New York Herald In 1903 Mary published two more novels, My Friend Annabel Lee and The Devils Letters to Mary MacLane.

At the age of 27, Mary returned to Butte. In the years she spent traveling the world, she came to realize that not only did she miss Butte, but that it was her true home, In the years following her return, Mary realized a deep love for the city and described it extensively in he novel, I, Mary MacLane. Here she wrote about Butte with a different perspective. She wrote of her deep love for her hometown, where she came to gather inner-peace. Her descriptions of Butte in this novel varied greatly from her first novel as evidenced in the following excerpt from I, Mary MacLane.

''As much as fir the mountains in their morning intimateness I feel love for all outsides and surfaces of the town itself: the stone streets full of houses and shops and brick walls and laundry-wagons and persons…. the little rocky' Missoula gulch: the North Excelsior Street nieghborhood where I wrote my' Devil arid Gray-dawn book: the Bnite High School where I studied and meditated youngly: the old Library' where l used to get a variety of books in my' gangling girlhood: the electric ore-trains going to Anaconda:: the Post-Office News-stand. . . the brilliant sparkling look of the town from far out on, the Flat late in the evening, like a mammoth broken tiara of stary diamonds, twinkling points of blue and orange and cerise and violet, fired an flung against a Mountainside of dark velvet, -an aspect intensely Butte . . . All of it has a feel of something aloof arid metallic and distinctive and gray-purple and Butte-Montana."

After the publication of I, Mary' MacLane, Mary returned to the East. She made a movie based on her book. Later a movie about Mary MacLane was made entitled Men who Have Made Love To Me. These films have not been located. Also, much of Mary MacLane's writing is yet to be discovered, such as her work for the Chicago Sunday Tribune, the New York Evening Journal and the Butte Evening News.

Mary MacLane was considered a genius in her time. In an era where women and children were to be seen and not heard, she knew what she wanted and she did whatever it took to get it. Her novels were not very popular in Butte, Butte's citizens were not ready for an outspoken female writer. She was reputed to be mad. However, Mary MacLane was well known throughout the country, and her first novel was printed in thirty different languages. She was applauded for her courage and candor. Her 'writing was called modernism and helped to fuel the women's movement and the style of dressing called flapperism.

the truth about her was still left somewhat obscure; tie charm of her flapperhood,, so to speak, distracted attention from it and so concealed it

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